Taormina! My first trip to the beautiful hill city of Taormina was full of exploration, great food and a terrifying cable car ride down the mountain side. This city is so compact that the mail man rides on a bicycle to deliver packages, alleyways with narrow stairwells are around every corner you see, and if you spend more than a few hours here you’re bound to run into the same tourists or locals more than once as you walk along the city streets.
When you first enter town you’ll walk through one of two gates to the city. Porta Catania to the South or Porta Messina at the North end of the city (pictured below). These two gates lead you onto the main drag of the city, Corso Umberto. Here you’ll find all of the major shopping, restaurants, and alleyways with signs pointing to any of the big sights in town. Corso Umberto is a great place to begin your time in Taormina.
Our first stop in town was the Greek amphitheater. This theater was built in the seventh century B.C. and now serves as a stage for open air concerts. On the day that we went, the theater was set up for the annual Taormina film festival. A few parts of it were blocked off from our view, but generally it was great to see and lots of tourists were walking around marveling in the large structure. Admission into the amphitheater is generally 9 Euro. I’m not sure if we just had a very nice man at the entrance or accidentally sweet talked our way in… maybe a bit of both, but we managed to get in free! My favorite part about being inside of the amphitheater was the amazing views! If you walk around the outermost rim you have breathtaking views in every direction you turn. The rolling hills to the North, Mount Etna (which was just coming off of 3 very active days!) to the South, and the beautiful sea to the East.
After our tour of the Amphitheater, we headed back to Taormina’s “main street” Corso Umberto. here we found a great little spot for lunch: Terrazza Angelo. We decided to split a calzone and an order of bruschetta to make sure we would be plenty hungry for gelato or a granita later on in the day! They were both wonderful and I will definitely be coming back to this nice little restaurant for another lunch on the terrace.
After we fueled up, we strolled the length of Corso Umberto and browsed through some shops, alleyways and saw all that the hillside town had to offer. One of my favorite things to do when traveling is remembering to keep my head on a swivel and really peering down any alley way you pass by. There are so many little hidden gems to be discovered, you just have to find them! I loved this next little spot in Taormina. A narrow staircase right off of Corso Umberto leading up to a ceramics shop with “I (heart) TAORMINA” spelled out in tiles on the face of one of the steps. It was super cute and made for a great little photo op.
After we walked the length of Corso Umberto and explored as much of upper Taormina as possible, we decided to make a pit stop for gelato and then head on our way down to the beach. We were excited (and a bit terrified) to ride the cable car down. The cost was only 3 Euro each direction and delivered us safely down to the bottom where we had just a 5 minute walk to the beach! Tony and I had read a lot about the blue grotto and other beautiful sights on the sea here in Taormina and decided to try our hand at hiring a boat to take us out for a tour! We very easily found a tour company that charged a fair price to give us a 45 minute tour of the area. This tour covered the main bay of Taormina, the blue grotto, a cruise around Isola Bella, two more small grottos and another large bay with beautiful sandy beaches. We were able to see quite literally a whole other side of Taormina and fell even more in love with this city while on the water!
We had a blast on our day trip to Taormina. I loved exploring this new city and being able to experience these beautiful sights and make great memories just an hour from home! I’m excited to head back to this city again and again. I’ll probably visit next month when some family is in town and we do a nice tour around Sicily. More Travel Thursday’s to come…
//Lyndsay.
